


Untethered

by rosencrantzandguildensternarentdead



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Blood, Present Day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosencrantzandguildensternarentdead/pseuds/rosencrantzandguildensternarentdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The blood crusted beneath your fingernails is not your own</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untethered

The blood crusted beneath your fingernails is not your own. Not in the conventional sense. It never sped through your veins or oozed over your skin but it seems to belong to you. Somehow it is your responsibility. You wonder whose it is.

The floor is too clean and it squeaks against your shoes. You scuff your heel against the powdery green lino, tapping out an irregular rhythm. You always hated waiting rooms – A&E is hell to you. Your chair creaks as you lean back, the plastic hard and cold in the air-conditioned room. The air is pungent with the sweat of misery and fear and you think about leaving but Briseis is there and she keeps fidgeting and glancing at you when she thinks you don’t see. Her cheeks are pale and tear tracked like she has been crying for a long time and that’s wrong, Briseis is good and calm and strong and people shouldn’t be making her cry. You try holding her hand to make her safe and happy again but it hurts her to see the dried blood. Beneath the fluorescent lights, it glows strong and dark like hot coals.

The fluorescents make everything strange and flat, as if the light is a pale sheet of plastic covering every surface. Stranger’s faces are empty and pale. They seem synthetic, too clean and smooth under the humming lights. You look down at the skin of your forearm, seeing if you, too, are turned plastic. Your skin is bathed in the thin white and you wonder why you don’t feel the warmth of it. It seems very far away. Colours are wrong, the bright too bright and the dark too empty. The dirty red beneath your nails should be dull by now but it stays vibrant against rust brown edges. Each shadow is imprecise and insubstantial. You poke at the silhouette of a chair with your toe. It is a shadow’s shadow, barely there until it converges with the dark shape of your foot. You hiss in irritation at the unclear edge and return to tapping your heel against the floor.

There are coloured flecks in the lino. It is too clean. There are no footprints, no stains like the ones that mark your fingers, just the flecks. You search for a repeating pattern, focussing and unfocussing your eyes to see if any shapes appear. A few times you think you see something but a nurse or an old man walks over your patch of lino and you lose it. There must be a pattern, something to explain why the flecks are there, but you can’t quite reach an answer. When you stare into the middle distance, the white flecks are stars. A small cluster near Briseis’ shoe is something particular, a constellation you know. You point it out to her, ask if she knows but she just stares at you. Patroclus would know. Briseis might be a good friend but she never understands what you’re thinking quite like Patroclus does.

"Where is he, anyway?"

Your question seems to throw her.

"Why isn’t Patroclus here?" His absence is wrong. It worries you.

"Achilles…" She falters. Her mouth opens and closes. When her eyes fill with tears, you notice how well the salt water reflects the room.

Before Briseis can answer your question, you are approached by an apologetic man in a white coat. She looks relieved. She also looks terrified.

 

The apologetic man takes a man and woman aside to speak to them. They are young, like you. You think there are red stains on the man’s hands. The woman is pale and tired and she weeps while the apologetic man speaks. She shakes and looks pale, swaying slightly on unsteady feet. At first, the bloody-handed man seems confused. Then he shakes his head, jerks backwards. His breath leaves him in jagged gunshots. When he snarls at the apologetic man, it carries over the thrum of the overcrowded room and everyone pretends not to hear. At first, the bloody-handed man’s screams are inhuman and meaningless, rage and grief dripping from cracked lips. As the screaming descends to sobs, you pick out some of the words.

_wasn’t aiming for him_

_he’ll be okay_

_please_

_should be me_

_he’ll be okay_

_he’ll be okay_

Patroclus should be here soon. He’ll be okay.

 

You wonder how long you’ve been in this waiting room. It feels like a month, or maybe a moment, but you can’t be sure. Time seems to be misbehaving. You try asking Briseis. She glances at her watch and answers you, her mouth forming kind shapes as she speaks.

Briseis has a good voice, you think. It is quiet and definite, with a gentleness that can turn to strength when you least expect it. It isn’t as musical as Patroclus’, never as beautiful as Patroclus’, but it is a part of her and so you love it. It sounds fainter than usual, you realise. There is something else, a scratchy shake, that makes you want to hug the woman and never let go. She sounds fragile.

"Did you hear me, Achilles?" Briseis is looking at you as if you are acting oddly.

Your brow crumples as you think, wondering what she was saying. Concentration is tricky because your brain feels liquid and warm but it doesn’t worry you. Nothing does. Eventually you remember.

"I asked you how long we’ve been here." You speak slowly, enjoying the sensation of your lips creating sounds.

Briseis raises an eyebrow, smiling slightly. "You did. I answered you."

You huff in irritation. "Yes. I know that. But I didn’t hear it. I was too busy listening to you speak," you explain.

"Of course. That makes sense." She rolls her eyes. You suspect that Briseis is being sarcastic.

You turn to watch the room for a moment. Or an hour. It’s been hard to keep track since they gave you something to calm you down. The ground is too far away and your thoughts are thin and slippery. Everything is disjointed. Now you aren’t sure why you needed to be calm in the first place. Not that it matters.

The insect buzz of the fluorescent light above you is soothing. It is so quiet, a tiny sound at the back of your mind, one that you feel rather than hear. You spend some time contemplating the steadiness of it and imagine the electricity dancing through the wires like a thunderstorm, lightning glancing off the glass of the bulb. You decide that it sounds vibrant, powerful, like copper on the back of a tongue that tastes blood. You twitch at the thought, looking down at your stained hands. Through your tranquil fog you see the blood as it trickles from the corner of his mouth, staining his lips dark as he coughed. There was too much blood. His eyes were screaming with it, his fingers dragging at his throat as it rose up and choked him. A part of you wonders if he could taste electricity and fluorescent bulbs, of if he could think of anything at all that wasn’t fear and pain.

It isn’t until Briseis' fingers curl around yours that you realise your hands are shaking. She leans forward into your eye line, eyes widening in concern. Her fingers tighten, thumbs rubbing slowly against the inside of your wrists. You focus on the movement, letting it anchor you. Briseis makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, a question.

You draw in a juddering breath, willing your hands to steady. You try again and again, letting your world reduce to the sensation of Briseis' hands on yours. It takes a long time but you manage to take a slow breath, one that doesn’t catch.

"He couldn’t breathe." It is barely a whisper but your face is blank as you say it.

"I know." Briseis has bitten her lip raw. "I know. I’m scared, too."

All your reactions are vague, still laden with a calm mist. "I should feel more than this."

"You did." Briseis looks away from you. "You were suffocating on it. You could have hurt yourself, they thought it would be best to…" She trails off. "I hadn’t seen you in that much pain before tonight. Either of you."

Briseis is breaking. You can see it in her skin, her shoulders curled tight as she shrinks into her chair. Her eyes rove constantly across the floor, never stopping, never giving you a chance to see her.

It is your turn now to reassure her, squeezing her hands tight in yours. You try to find the right words, ones to make her smile but you are hollow. Everything still feels so far away. You know Patroclus would say something perfect. "We can’t deal with this. He’s always been the best of us in a crisis."

She turns mascara-smeared eyes back to you. "He has." She sighs, shaking her head a little. "I’m so tired, Achilles. I want this to be over."

She leans into you and you open your arms, letting her huddle against your body.

"It will be," you mumble against her hair. "We’ll know soon. One way the other."

 

Briseis pretends to sleep for an hour. She curls into your chest, breathing slow and silent, but she is too still. Her body is tense against yours, on a knife-edge. You let her pretend. She wasn’t given the respite from feeling that you were. Eventually, her body gives in to exhaustion and relaxes against your shoulder.

With nothing to do but wait, you watch the lino floor. At first you are content to let your eyes drift from one coloured fleck to the next, following them like breadcrumbs. You trace the path of six blue dots around and around for almost five minutes before you realise they are leading you in a circle. Then you feel yourself returning. The chemically induced fog is draining away, drip by gradual drip. The flecks are becoming coherent. A rough square of red shards encases Briseis’ left foot, exploding outwards into a rainbow of splinters against the sterile green. You want to lean down, pry one of the shapes from the lino but that would disturb Briseis. You make do with scratching your initial into your seat with your thumbnail instead. The rough plastic tears your nail and red blossoms around the scratch, mingling with the older stains. It stings, sharp and immediate. You welcome the distraction.

You are picking at the bloody nail when a tall woman clad in a white coat approaches. She is different to the apologetic doctor. She doesn’t stammer or avoid your eye as she asks you to go with her.

You are slow disentangling yourself from Briseis, scared to wake her. Maybe it would be better, you think, to curl up closer and try to sleep through this doctor’s summons, to avoid whatever news she has. Her matter-of-fact tone turns your stomach to lead and your fingertips are numb with worry. You swallow twice, take a ragged breath and follow her.

 

Everything is distant as you crouch down beside Briseis' chair. There is a dull roar in your ears that drowns out the sound of the room. You reach out to touch her shoulder, hating yourself for waking her. You force yourself to look at her face, blinking back a numbing blurriness.

Briseis comes to slowly, her eyes finding yours after a long moment of haziness. At first she is disoriented and then her eyes harden. She sits up straighter, bracing herself for a blow you wish wasn’t coming.

It takes too long for you to find your voice. She sees your words unformed and takes them from you.

"It’s over."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry.   
> Feedback is good!


End file.
